EDITORIAL: Biden shrugs as Social Security insolvency looms

The latest report from the Social Security trustees further highlights the Biden administration’s economic incoherence.

According to the most recent projections, the program’s trust fund, which pays retiree benefits, will be depleted by 2033. That’s one year earlier than expected.

The revisions reflect updated “projections for labor productivity and economic growth in the United States,” The New York Times reported last week.

In addition, Fed interest rate hikes in response to the highest inflation in 40 years may trigger a recession, which would hamper the labor market and thus reduce payroll tax collections.

The report doesn’t even touch on the soaring national debt, now fast approaching $32 trillion. Interest payments on the debt grew by 35 percent last year to almost half a trillion dollars. They are expected to leap another 35 percent this year. This further siphons off resources that could be diverted to other programs, including Social Security.

Yet Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen insists that all is well.

“Social Security and Medicare are two bedrock programs that older Americans rely upon for their retirement security,” she said in a recent statement. “The Biden-Harris administration is committed to ensuring the long-term viability of these critical programs so that retirees can receive the hard-earned benefits they’re owed.”

This is either a cynical effort to deceive the voters or a clear indication that the president and his economic team have no idea what they’re doing. Take your pick.

Since his inauguration, President Joe Biden and his Democratic enablers in Congress have pursued an economic agenda designed to further nourish the federal bureaucracy at the expense of the private sector that pays the bills. The result has been a budget and regulatory blowout unprecedented outside of wartime or a pandemic with no end in sight to the accumulation of red ink.

To make matters worse, the administration was warned that its policies would result in soaring prices and slower growth — and even a recession — but the president and his defenders insisted for months that such critics were partisan hacks who lacked credibility.

Notably, they have yet to issue any mea culpas. But perhaps the Social Security report is a start. The current trustees were all appointed by Mr. Biden, so their assessment that slower growth, higher inflation and a potential recession — all a result of this administration’s dubious spending practices — will exacerbate the financial problems facing Social Security is a tacit admission that the White House hasn’t done the program any favors. Independent voters should pay heed.